Halloween Murder Mystery Puzzle: Find the Killer Among 5,000 Suspects, Printable Name Elimination Game for Adults, PDF and E-ink

A Halloween murder mystery logic puzzle for adults and teens to solve alone or with friends, not a party kit: 16 clues, 5,000 suspects and the solution, in A4, US Letter and E-ink PDFs.

Murder at the Lantern Ball is a printable murder mystery elimination puzzle. On Halloween night, the owner of the Grand Marlowe Hotel is found poisoned in the quiet Winter Garden while 5,000 guests in costume dance in the ballroom. Nobody has left the building. Sixteen facts about the killer are true, none of them gives a name, and together they leave exactly one guest.

A classic style mystery: no blood and no violence on the page. The story is told in words; the only pictures are a case file cover and the register itself.

HOW TO PLAY
Read a clue, then strike out every guest in the register for whom it is false. Write down how many guests are left. After clues 4, 8 and 12 a checkpoint tells you how many guests should be left, so you know you are on track. When one guest is left, you have found the killer.

WHAT IS IN THE FILE
- The case: the story on one page and a guide to the ten register columns
- How to solve: the rules, how to read each kind of clue, and a worked example
- 16 clues on two pages, with a box for your count next to each one and 3 checkpoints
- The register: 5,000 guests, sorted by surname, with name, age, costume, mask colour, arrival time, ticket number, table, drink, street and favourite sweet
- The solution on the last page: the killer, how many guests are left after every clue, and each clue checked against the killer's row

WHAT YOU GET
Three PDF files of the same case:
- ARLing-Murder-at-the-Lantern-Ball-A4.pdf (88 pages)
- ARLing-Murder-at-the-Lantern-Ball-US-Letter.pdf (96 pages)
- ARLing-Murder-at-the-Lantern-Ball-E-ink.pdf (116 pages, 157 x 210 mm, for e-ink tablets: an index page and a row of letters on every register page jump to that letter in the register)
The register is printed at 8 pt in the A4 and US Letter files and at 7 pt in the E-ink file. The register alone is 82 pages in A4, so you may want to print it single sided and lay the pages out, or solve on a tablet.

EVERY CLUE CHECKED BY TWO PROGRAMS
A computer program built the case. Two separate programs, written in two different programming languages, checked the printed clues against the printed register: exactly one guest fits all sixteen clues, every clue removes at least 5 percent of the guests still in play, and every checkpoint number is right. Each clue can be checked by looking at a single row; no outside knowledge and no guessing.

WHO IT IS FOR
Adults and teens who like logic puzzles, detective stories and slow, careful work with a pencil. Play alone, or share the register pages between friends. Text is in English.

GOOD TO KNOW
- This is a digital download. Nothing is shipped.
- You may print as many copies as you need for yourself, your family or your classroom. Please do not share or resell the files.
- Names in the register were combined at random by a computer program from public lists of common U.S. first names and surnames. It is a work of fiction; any match with a real person is chance.
- We have not timed how long the case takes to solve, so we do not promise a playing time.

HOW IT WAS MADE
Designed by ARLing, a small studio in Slovakia. Texts and puzzles were created with the help of AI tools. The cover and every page are drawn in code; no AI images are used.

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